Monaco have had a formal offer for Folarin Balogun rejected by Arsenal, reports David Ornstein of The Athletic.
The Ligue 1 outfit are understood to have tested the waters after last week’s friendly at Emirates Stadium and then returned with a written proposal.
Both were rejected having failed to come close to the Gunners’ asking price, reported to be in excess of £35 million.
🚨 EXCL: Arsenal reject written bid from Monaco for Folarin Balogun. Follows verbal offer turned down by #AFC after friendly. #ASMonaco pursuit ongoing – sporting directors have good relationship. #Inter keen but unclear if can afford @TheAthleticFC #USMNT https://t.co/xp0yVUcL8c
— David Ornstein (@David_Ornstein) August 7, 2023
Having lost striker Breel Embolo to an ACL injury, there’s clearly a need on Monaco’s part to recruit up front but it seems hard to believe they’ll go as high as we want.
If nothing else, the interest should draw other parties out of the woodwork.
Inter Milan have been sniffing around but seem concerned about spending big money on a player with only one full season of senior football under his belt.
Having sat out two of the three friendlies in the USA due to a knock, Balogun has since missed the aforementioned Monaco friendly and yesterday’s Community Shield win over Manchester City. There have been no updates on his fitness and it’s thought he wouldn’t be part of any squad next weekend even if he was fit.
Can we not swap him for Mbappe?
Maybe 8 years ago
he would have been a small child then
You may not have heard, they already sold him. By the way, that squad also included Fabinho, Bernardo Silva, Thomas Lemar, and Benjamin Mendy, among several other future internationals. Makes Brighton look ordinary.
We dodged a huge bullet with Lemar. We were ready with a 92m bid for him – in 2017! Still boggles my mind.
Absolutely, Lemar has no winning mentality and couldn’t even fight for himself.
Why is everything you say spiteful and irrelevant?
Why everything I say is based on facts?
I have a sneaking suspicion he’ll sign for us, but I suppose the smart money is on Real Madrid
Really?! There’s no chance Mbappe signs for us.
I think we are probably one of the three most attractive destinations in world football right now, and City already have Haaland.
Almost no chance to be honest but you never know.
Genuinely wouldnt want him here for just 1 season unless a current starter faces a serious injury before the window closes.
Depends. How much cash is being offered with Mbappe to sweeten the deal?
What’s the point, have you seen Trossard?
Glad we are holding out for a proper fee, but really wish we would have had the opportunity to see him play with this squad during the preseason to see if he could have offered a better option than Nketiah. Wish we could keep him, but there won’t be much playing time available given we have Jesus, Havertz, Trossard and Nketiah that Arteta surely trusts more than him.
I agree. He surely developed during his season in France, but the only time I saw him play for Arsenal, early last season, he was clearly overmatched. Arteta has seen him in training, of course, and at this point he has obviously earned our trust in his judgment.
That was the season before. During our tricky start that the media still never shuts up about
I think Artera would’ve let him start in place of Jesus if he had a bit more run with us in preseason, but that knock he picked up really threw a spanner in the works. Just bad timing, if that’s really what it is (a knock and not the player asking out). Sometimes things just don’t work out, kind of makes you appreciate even more those magical times where they do…
Managers have the discretionary power to keep a player or not. Personally, as a fan, I want players who did exactly what was expected from them, to be encouraged therefore I am sad to see Balogun leave. Arteta never gave him the opportunity to compete and clearly said that Nketiah was above him and that he needed to treat Nketiah right.
Doesn’t Arteta want to treat players right anymore, Tierney and Ramsdale? Love Timber of course but just pointing to the Nketiah, Elneny exceptions.
Great performance yesterday, congrats to the players and the manager for beating the Bank of….
Curious why you constantly post negativity and hate with your time? It’s got to be debilitating to be surrounded with negativity. I hope you get help, life is too short. Up the Arsenal.
That’s the way facts checking looks these days.
When the team loses form and people allow themselves hate against a particular player, you won’t see a single comment like that from my part in the archives.
Here’s the thing NO ONE is considering…. Do you think if Nketiah had played a season in France last year he wouldn’t have performed as well if not better than Balagun??? I 100% believe he would have. 100%.
Quite possibly but he is older
Depends what league he played in…
Balogun, Lokonga, Tavares, Pepe, Marquinos don’t even have the new pictures taken on arsenal official website. Exits looming
Monaco rejected multiple bids by us for Mbappe and Lemar while selling every other decent player in the squad to other clubs. Screw them
I seem to remember Wenger saying they lied to him about the availability of players for transfer, and then promptly sold them all to other clubs
Imagine being so underhanded to a man who won your club a championship title and conducted himself with such grace despite all of the cheating that went on around him (Marseille). Football execs at most clubs are just a cult of cunts.
cult of cunts is amazing!
Add the word blue
High Priest Terry?
At least, they sold Tiemoue Bakayoko to Chelsea.
That and they rejected our £92m bid for Lemar 🙂
If they have the money I’m sure we’ll be happy to take it off them. I’m betting they don’t.
Good to have multiple interested parties, as we should do for a player of Balogun’s profile. You look at how much Man United have paid for a striker who scored 9 goals in Serie A last season and you’d have to say at half the price Balogun represents excellent value and that’s why we should hold very firm on fee. As much as anything given he ticks the home grown boxes, if he performs well for a couple of seasons abroad absolutely no reason why he couldn’t be sold back into the premier league at a significant profit for the… Read more »
I also note that Inter Milan got Andre Onana on a free transfer from Ajax, and have now sold him for big money to Utd. If they want Balogun then they need to pay the going rate, and stop trying to do things on the cheap. Pathetic!
“Stop trying to do things on the cheap”?! lol…
“Dear Arsenal, here is a signed, blank cheque for Balogun, do with it what you please”.
We have a long history of french and italian clubs pleading poverty with us but flushing money down the toilet elsewhere. Not unreasonable to expect they stop treating us as mugs.
We literally did the same thing for Declan Rice. Every club does this. Arsenal are well versed in low balling.
I’m surprised Arsenal are open to selling a player who’s name ends in Gun.
If there’s a player called Gunnar Gunnarson, Arsenal should get him in.
Using the same logic, we probably should have sprinted in the other direction when offered Runarsson.
Run! an arson.
The last Arsene worked out quite well for us rhough
Problem was he is the son of a runner, not a footballer. Now if Futbolsson becomes available…
Or Arsene Nail Gunnarson
We did sell Mazeed Ogungbo to Barrow this summer.
We did try to buy Gundogan who almost has “gun” twice just in his surname. If he names his next son Gunther Gundogun we should just give him the money right now.
Luckily, we were never even briefly tempted by hiring a boyish-looking Norwegian manager.
Weren’t a bad option as a player off the bench though
as opposed to a club and a manager who’s names begin with arse
Apparently we were in for his son, Gunnar Gunnarssonsson, but unfortunately he was murdered and the killer was you.
Just pay the asking price!
Seems a shame that we’ve not seen him get a go this pre-season off of the season he’s had, but trust that the right call is being made
Plus, the manager said he was going to watch him play in pre-season and decide.
I wonder if the slightly underwhelming level of interest in him so far + Jesus’ setback might cause him and us to have a change of heart to stick instead of twist I have a feeling he and us were expecting better than a Europa League calibre French club and some half hearted interest from the Milan clubs. Still being quite an unknown quality but wanting a starring role is the reason he’s not generating the kind of interest we want – clubs who could afford £40m would want to loan him first before making a decision, which obviously doesn’t… Read more »
Hello Monaco, Emi Rates of Arseblog BTL fame here. I have some advice for securing Balogun if you’re serious about him. Try paying what he’s worth and not a penny less and see what happens. You stingy cunts!
All the best,
Emi
Dude you’re a shoe-in for director of football whenever edu leaves…
I know. I don’t come cheap though.
The thing is, he is not for sale. Arteta has decided to keep him as a tactical option to implement a Tall Target Man and to rotate Balogan and Kai in that new roll against stronger opposition. It would take a starting bid of nearer £60 million for Arsenal to even start a negotiation. So any other bid that does not come close to £60 million will be ignored as Arsenal are not desperate to sell.
Bit of SEO optimisation required to get that to come up as the first thing on Google when other potential bidders look up what’s going on, but otherwise good work.
He’s shorter than Eddie
He’s shorter than everyone.
Buying Havertz for 65mil and selling Balogun for 35 just looks absolutely unreasonable. Especially if Havertz doesn’t play the Xhaka role in the end. We need a world class striker in front. Jesus is great but he is not one, Nketiah seems highly unlikely to develop into one and Havertz just isn’t a good striker. Will Balogun develop into a world class striker? I don’t know but I would give him a solid chance since it seems inevitable that we’ll have to splash around a 100mil for a striker next summer. Unfortunately Arteta obviously doesn’t like him thus the inevitability… Read more »
I think the issue Arteta has with him, is that he wants players to show in training that they deserve a place in the starting 11. Get your head down and work, show it on the training field like Eddie clearly has. Not go to the media and demand first team football. Arteta wants players that put the club first and fight for a place. Balogun has yet to show at arsenal that he deserves a bigger role.
Couldn’t have put it better!
True
Havertz: Proven international quality Swiss Army Knife of forwards.
Balogan: Specialist striker. Might be able to hack it in the PL, but we don’t know that for sure.
Good news.
We need Flo here. Simple as that.
Doesn’t matter if we don’t sell him he still isn’t going to start for any Arteta team…
Yeah, not sure that’s happening. It hasn’t been rejected because Arsenal want to keep Balogun
Show EEeeeeeeee the monnney!!
Insert photoshop of Edu as Cuba Gooding Jr screaming at whoever the Monaco guy is now.
I think Balogun saying he has nothing to prove during preseason because of the season he had prior rubbed Arteta the wrong way. Arteta I assume wants every player to go hard during training and ‘earn the right to play’. I wish Balogun just focused all his energy in showcasing his ability that we know he has during preseason. However, its also possible that the club had already decided to offload Balogun prior to preseason to offset some of the incomings, also something Balogun mentioned during his interview in the US – that it wasn’t up to him and it… Read more »
I don’t know if this has been mentioned later in the comments, but ref Blogs question in the erm, blog, and Arsecast: is it better to get top dollar premiership money and face him as an opponent, or sell abroad for less? Let’s fucking back ourselves here. We have a beast of a defence and he’s a guy who could be good, but just equalled Laca (all due respect mate) by scoring quite a lot in France (again all due respect, depuis des années les meilleures joueurs du monde on y lancé leurs carriers/sont français, ligue un n’est pas un… Read more »
Well, he just needs to play the long game. Didn’t Jesus famously “disappear” in his early 30s?
I don’t like the use of Lacazette’s excellent season in France as a reason to degrade the league. Of course the quality overall is not as high as in England due to the massive financial disparity, but that doesn’t explain why he thrived at Lyon and not with us in his final season. Environments matter. Lyon is the club of his youth and most of his career and France is his home. Not just that but the system on the pitch would’ve been constructed to maximize his talents, whereas at Arsenal he was asked to play as a very physical… Read more »